Robert A. George's ruminations on politics, race, pop culture, sports, comic books & various other sundry temptations of the human condition. Yes, he writes for the New York Post, but the views here are solely his own.

Monday, October 06, 2008

SNL "Bails" On The Democrats --UPDATED!!

ADDENDUM (10/7/08): Had to take this post down to do some fiddling with it. NBC has taken the bailout skit video off its site and its co-owned HULU video portal (see below). However, Michelle Malkin provides transcript and videoshots.

While Saturday Night Live did offer up another great Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin skit this week (with Jason Sudekis doing a rather hilarious Joe Biden), it also included a lengthy, complex, skit on the bailout and the subprime policies that precipitated the crisis. It was not exactly flattering to congressional Democrats:

Whoever wrote this skit knows their stuff, because there are details in it that would go over the head of all but the most intense political junkie.

UPDATE: The scrubbing of this video has been pretty complete. In addition to it vanishing from NBC and Hulu, all versions of it posted to YouTube return the following message: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by NBC Universal." Interestingly, many other SNL skits from this season -- particularly the Palin/Fey ones -- are still up there on YouTube. Now, there may be legitimate legal issues involved. Two characters lampooned happen to be real-life couple Herbert and Marion Sandlers who made billions off of subprime mortgages they sold to Wachvia. A caption on the skit reads, "People who should be shot." Ooops

UPDATE II: Shh...don't tell anyone, but right click on this link and "Save As" to your computer.

UPDATE III: Late Tuesday afternoon, NBC released the following statement: "UPON REVIEW, WE CAUGHT CERTAIN ELEMENTS IN THE SKETCH THAT DIDN'T MEET OUR STANDARDS. WE TOOK IT DOWN AND MADE SOME MINOR CHANGES AND IT WILL BE BACK ONLINE SOON."